Question- Determining future value in Online Leagues

[waltwa]

I have noticed in Online Leagues that prospects with the same ratings are regarded differently. Here is what i think happens.

You join an online league with a certain set of real rosters. Then you set up 10 solo leagues with the same set of rosters. You play the solo leagues a few seasons ahead so that you have statistics for all the players. Now when a trade is offered you have a way of checking to see how the real prospects that are in the game in 2007 tend to develop. I would imagine that prospects after the year 2007 (or whatever future year the game starts) are randomly developed by the game and are different from game to game. But it is the real prospects of 2007 that seem to be a problem.

What i have noticed is that 2 5 star prospects of equal ratings are regarded differently. I will see a 5 star prospect offered in a trade and then because i am pretty familiar with the game i wll inquire about the other equal prospect and be turned down.

Here is my question? Is it possible in the game to actually play ahead as i have outlined and find that 1 5 star prospect with great ratings will fail or be a journeyman say 8 out of 10 times (or even 10 -10) and another prospect with the exact same ratings will succeed almost every time.

In addition am i correct in assuming that after the start year the game generates different players in all leagues?

If this situation exists it is something that should be addressed. It should be addressed by making the future chance of success for real prospects more of a 50-50 chance so that savvy players don't have the advantage of knowing which prospects have a much greater chance of success.

[RonCo]

Since development is random, playing ahead (while still against the rules ... or at least the spirit of the rules...of online leauges) will most likely not give "true" reads. I suppose is someone did play head it could give them a feel for probability, though. OOTP development can be looked at as a complex probability field that is based on age and starting point of talents and ratings. A five-star 19 year old is actually probably worth less than a 5-star 22 year old, for example...assuming that stars have "true" meaning.

I should note that stars are a terrible way to associate players. A four-star SP could have a very different value from a four-star C. In addition, it's likely that the game itself is assessing stars in ways that do not give true value. V5's star calculator was terrible (or great, depending on your viewpoint), for example. It was notorious for 1-star pitchers that did great, and 4 stars who struggled. Odd thing...all those 1-stars had brilliant avoid walks talents/ratings, and those struggling 4-stars, uh, didn't. Go figure.

[waltwa]

i wouldn't compare 2 players just on stars but rather on ratings and even statistics. I still get the "feeling" that by playing 10 solo leagues you can get a book on who is going to succeed or fail. However a feeling is not fact and i hope i am wrong. But if i am right it should be addressed.

[BruceM]

Originally Posted by waltwa

i wouldn't compare 2 players just on stars but rather on ratings and even statistics. I still get the "feeling" that by playing 10 solo leagues you can get a book on who is going to succeed or fail. However a feeling is not fact and i hope i am wrong. But if i am right it should be addressed.

I'm assuming you're talking about an historical league with real players, because if I start a new league in 2007, fictional or real, using say Cubbie Fans Rosters, and you take the same roster set and start 10 leagues with it, you're never going to get the same "fictional" players generated by the game in each of your 10 leagues nor will they be the same as the "fictional" players generated in my game, which is the one being used in the league.

So how can you figure out who is going to succeed when you never get the same "fictional" players generated?


Even with historical/real players I don't think you'd get accurate enough results to help in any way. There's so many other things to factor in like injuries, playing time, how long a player is left to develop at each level of minors. How much he's used by the manager.

[waltwa]

I am only talking about real rosters and then only about the real prospects that are actually in a teams minor league system. I am sure that prospects generated after the 1st year are random so would not be in the discussion.

[robster1225]

I think the point is, that just like real life, there is not an exact science to if a player will develop to a certain level. If there was, the game would be to easy.

[minnelli]

This won’t work – it’s fun to play around with though. In one of my online leagues I tried this out. It was more an experiment than anything. Take xyz league and make multiple copies so you have xyz1, xyz2, xyz3, etc. Then go run a full season and look at the ratings at the end of the year. Because it is random a lot of the time, some specs take big jumps while others never do. The same with your older guys, some times they hang in and have a good year, while others times they drop like a rock.

So if you try this run xyz1 first. Look at the results and run xyz2 by trying to take those improving players and move them into whatever you need. Like I said it’s fun to try, great players will usually remain great but the others are a shot in the dark. I ran about 20 plus seasons over and over for my pathetic team. I usually ended up the season with between 60-80 wins. I stopped the sim every 15 days or so to make modifications. The end result was just as I said. As soon as it looked like player a looked hot, the next sim he was horrible, then the sim after he was okay.

Just my experience…

Minnelli

[waltwa]

the question has arisen but once again it was more of a suspicion rather than fact. i agree tho that if there is a way to see future development it should be made more random

[kq76]

I don't know about 2006, but in 6.5 and previously there was 1 rating (and possibly more, but definitely one I relied on heavily and it's not the one a lot of people new to OOTP seemed to think was that important) that really helped a prospect's chance at developing. You didn't have to sim ahead or anything and there was no guarantee he would develop, but I was convinced there was a greater chance all else being equal.

To find this out all you had to do was run a league (any league, didn't have to be a copy of the one you were playing) and then after 30 test years or so look at all the top players in the league and you could probably get a sense of what ratings a lot of them had in common. Alternatively, (and this is the way I first figured out, but I confirmed it with the other) find out what it is about the players the best GMs in your league are selecting over other players that are rated higher. Now if you were really keen you could throw it in an excel file, compare it to a large pool of high 1st rd rookies (guys you would expect would have a good chance at becoming superstars) and see which ratings the current superstar players had a greater frequency of than those rookies.

Now you may wonder, "but isn't that cheating?" and I'd say, is that not what real life GMs do, compare the characteristics of superstars in their league and then try to judge if the prospects they're looking at drafting or trading for have some of those same characteristics? Do they not look at what their successful competitors are doing and then try to not only copy it but improve on it as well? I think they do.

Now did this transfer over to 2006? Without really looking at it, I think it did. But, thankfully, it looks like it became at least more complicated.

And yeah, you could probably run test sims too, but I think there'd be far too much noise in the tests. I'd just go off the ratings.

[waltwa]

KQ i hope u pass your insight on to the developers.

[kq76]

Originally Posted by waltwa

KQ i hope u pass your insight on to the developers.

I'm pretty sure they realize it and they have plenty of competent beta testers to tell them if they don't. Besides, I don't think you'd want to get rid of it entirely because do you really want development to be truly random? I wouldn't want it to be. I can't believe it's random in real life. At least these things are no longer basically good bad and average, it's 1-100 or whatever. Now maybe it was 1-100 before and it was just presented as 1-3, but at least now you have to come up with a more difficult to gauge cutoff point and you have to re-look at them all because they're not the same ratings at least name-wise. If anything, maybe those ratings should also be scouted (if they aren't already) which would make them more of a guess. Or better yet, have an option to not have them scouted as a lot of online leagues won't like to choose scouting, but have an option to have them be more of a guess like it says 57 out of 100 but it could really be anywhere between 52 and 62. That's kind of like going to a 1-10 scale or whatever, but a range instead of one exact # is slightly different.

[sporr]

After some discussion, there is no predetermination of player development in OOTP2007.